


places where we aren't going back

by kimaracretak



Category: The Good Wife (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Ambition, F/F, POV Second Person, Political Campaigns, Semi-Public Sex, exercises in reparative subtlety, not a particularly reliable narrator either come to think of it, not particularly canon-timeline-compliant, on the merits of feminist solidarity or the lack thereof, past friendships, uneven temporalities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 13:48:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5007067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(but you've been careful for so long)</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>alicia wants, <em>and</em>. snapshots of season 4 with rather fewer men and rather more complex relationships between ladies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	places where we aren't going back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Oparu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oparu/gifts).



"So Maddie Hayward asked me out for drinks."

It's not the most graceful conversation opener you can imagine, but Kalinda's been twirling her shot glass between anxious fingers for what feels like an hour and refusing to meet your gaze over the six inch gap between your bar stools for at least that long, so you figure it's worth a try.

"Really." Kalinda's voice is flat, and though it betrays none of the nervousness of her fingers, it doesn't show any curiosity, either.

"Like, as a friend," you clarify, but the words sound halting to your own ears. You're not at all sure that Maddie's "just as a friend" disclaimer had been her intent from the start. You're not at all sure that you _want_ it to have been her intent from the start.

Now Kalinda does look at you, one eyebrow perfectly arched, and maybe the two of you haven't _really_ talked in a long time, but she still looks like she knows more about you than you know yourself. "What does Maddie Hayward want with you as a . . . friend?" Kalinda hesitates over the last word, and you're torn between _see, it wasn't just me that was confused_ and _goddamn, Kalinda, do you have to second-guess me all the time?_

"I don't know," you say, and this at least is undeniably true. Kalinda looks like she doesn't believe you, or maybe she's not even listening. "Isn't that why I should go? It would be nice, right, to have another friend?"

The corners of Kalinda's mouth pull tight and hurt and, _shit_ , you really shouldn't have said that. Not when at least some part of this ice between you the past months has been of your making. Not when you're still not sure where the two of you stand. "Shit, Kalinda, I didn't mean -- I mean --" None of this was going how it was supposed to.

Kalinda sighs, meets your eyes for the first time all night and reaches for your hands. You don't move, caught in her eyes like a lying witness on the stand. "People have funny definitions of friendship, sometimes, Alicia," she says. Her hands linger on yours, fingers stroking along the insides of your wrists. Maybe for a moment too long. Maybe you've just grown unaccustomed to the causal intimacies of friendship. You can't think of anything to say to her that you haven't already said, or tried and failed to say. It doesn't matter, anyway, because soon enough she's saying "Be careful with Maddie," and sliding off her stool, leaving you with a ten dollar bill and a half empty glass and an apology you don't know how to start saying.

It sounds oddly final, and for the first time in a very long while you wish she wasn't walking away from you.

But you've been careful for so long.

 

***

 

You meet Maddie for drinks anyway. Curiosity, maybe, or maybe it was just inevitable. You're getting better at lying to yourself. Not so good at believing, though, not yet, and you're not sure whether that's a comfort.

There's a little Kalinda-voice inside your head listing all the things that could go wrong, and you would think you're being paranoid if it wasn't so funny. That the Kalinda in your head still cares about you, thinks the two of you can come back from this strange, desolate, used to be a friendship place. Not that you haven't both tried, not that you haven't both forgiven, somewhat, but it's never going to be the same. Kalinda isn't going to care, _like that_ , anymore, and neither are you.

It's an old hurt, and an old story, but Maddie, though, is new and there's an ease in that not entirely overshadowed by the echoes of Kalinda following you through the bar. It's new that you called each other to meet, instead of glancing at each other over the tops of folders and mutually deciding _let's get out of here_. It's new that you order for yourself, that  your drinking partner doesn't have a story and a tradition to spin around the glasses pressing damp rings into the wood in front of you.

(Kalinda hasn't told you stories in so long. Not since the big one, not since you found out. You almost miss it.)

"I didn't think you would come," Maddie says once you both have your drinks.

The words sting, a little, and you push back the reflexive offense. There was a time, between Peter and Kalinda, when any comment that even hinted at honesty or trustworthiness didn't make you want to curl away and hide. It would be nice to reclaim that, one day.

"I could say the same thing about you." Not and have it be true, you don't add, but the corners of Maddie's eyes crinkle in amusement and you think maybe she hears the words anyway.

"So what are we doing here, then?"

And maybe it's your imagination, but the question seems to hang heavy in the air between you, like maybe there's a wrong answer and you're afraid of giving it. "Being friends," you say, and it sounds truer in your voice than it ever sounded in your head. _I'm married,_ you had said to her three short days ago. You've spent most of the time since wondering how much that matters. How much you want it to matter.

"Friends." Maddie draws the word out like it's the first time she's ever heard it, fingers drumming against the bar, and this time you don't quash the flicker of irritation that runs through you. This was her idea, after all.

"Yeah, _friends_ ," you don't quite snap. "Friends who talk about their lives and work and..." You trail off, leave the sentence unfinished for her to pick up. You're out of practice, making new friends. Out of practice talking about things that aren't your work or Peter's work or the kids.

But then Maddie laughs, and something strung tight inside you snaps like your voice didn't, and it shouldn't be easy but it _is_ , you and Maddie at the bar together in the colored lights refracting off the liquor bottles, laughing like it's the first time you ever have.

You should be with your husband. You should be with Will. You should, perhaps, even be with Kalinda, who has been distant in entirely new ways lately. But this -- this is new and bright and feels almost more forbidden than sleeping with Will, and the delight rings through your veins like the chime of Maddie's bottle against your glass rings in the air. When you do manage to talk around the laughter, about work and feminism and things you would never have shared with Kalinda it feels -- _right._ A different kind of friendship, but important.

The two of you lapse into silence. "I haven't laughed like that in..." You can't remember. Can't remember anything except calculated political smiles and soft chuckles tainted by the memory of things you hadn't yet known. Can't remember anything except the vast relief that this, finally, is different.

Maddie _hm_ s quietly around the mouth of her bottle, suddenly unreadable. You wonder what she sees in your eyes, in the tilt of your head. You like to think you've gotten good at the unreadable thing yourself over the past few years. Maybe that says everything either of you need to know. "A while for me, too," she says, and sets the bottle down rather more firmly than necessary.

She leans closer, wilting slightly with the combination of alcohol and laughter, and her head hovers just above your shoulder. You should pull her down to rest on your shoulder for real, or maybe push her away, bring reality back to a night somehow turned dreamlike. Maybe you're overthinking things, because Maddie's hand is not _not_ inappropriately high on your thigh, and when you turn to look down at her and your lips brush against her hairline, it sparks something inside you far warmer than you can possibly blame on just the wine. 

Maddie makes the decision for you, nestles her cheek into the hollow between your collarbone and shoulder bone. Bone against bone, and you find the thought strangely amusing as you trace meaningless patterns on the back of the hand that's resting against your upper thigh. You can feel the curve of her smile through the silk of your shirt, and you realize, all in a rush, _this is what it feels like with Will_ : warm and secret and unbearably light, though if this had been you and Will and his head on your shoulder both of you would have been all over Twitter twenty minutes ago. Maddie would probably have to go down on you on the bar before it occurred to anyone that you might be something other than two colleagues out for a post-work drink.

_Not that the idea doesn't have a certain appeal,_ you think, and then immediately,  _this is going to get out of hand very quickly_. "Maddie," you say softly, and when she raises her head in response her ear is right next to your mouth, so close you could kiss her without hardly moving. When was the last time you felt so daring after only a single glass of wine? You lean closer than the noise level in the bar could possibly justify. "Maddie," you say again, and hear her breath catch small and hungry in her throat when your mouth moves against her ear. "I need to go."

She pulls far enough away to search your eyes, and you can see her cheeks flush with what you can't bring yourself to hope is the same desire you hope you've managed to keep off your face. She hesitates, mouth open, and then comes to some decision in the space of the time it takes you to blink. "You should. But we should do ... _this_ again."

Your "yes, definitely," comes out a little huskier than you mean it too, and Maddie's smile widens. You should say _text me_ and turn and leave the bar and forget that she made you feel like this. You shouldn't give in to the reckless heat prickling across your skin and cup one of her cheeks and place a very deliberate kiss on the other.

But you've wanted to for so long.

*

At home, in bed, you come hard against your own fingers twice thinking of Maddie. Her breath on your chest, your fingers on her cheek. You're left alone and tired and still aroused, with a taste in your mouth you try to tell yourself is regret.

 

***

 

"So how was drinks with Maddie?" Kalinda asks the next morning. There's something in her eyes, something in the way she elongates _drinks_ and _Maddie_ that makes you think of playground taunts, _I know something you don't know._ Except Kalinda had never been one for teasing like that, even before, and you were the one there so what was there for Kalinda to know? In the fluorescent lights of the office you can almost convince even yourself that you imagined some of it, Maddie's hand on your thigh and the shell of her ear under your lips. That you were thinking of Will last night.

Kalinda's still waiting on an answer, face just a little too expectant -- smug, even if you were being uncharitable, so you say, "Good. She was nice." And if you give _nice_ a little too much emphasis, well. "In fact, we're going to do it again soon. Talk politics. Hang out." As if it were really that simple, as if you didn't hope -- _expect_ \-- more, remembering Maddie's eyes shining up at you.

Something not quite hurt flickers across Kalinda's face, and she scoops her notebook off the desk. "Right. Well. Diane needs me. And Eli was looking for you."

In another life she would have rolled her eyes at Eli's name, and you would have asked her why she's acquired a blue notebook that she's trying to keep hidden under her ever-present orange one. But that life is gone, and in this new one that you're building together Kalinda acquiesces to civility by keeping a blank face and shutting your door silently and you wait until she's out of sight before groaning and dropping your head in your hands.

You had hoped you wouldn't be looking forward to your next ... _definitely not a date_ with Maddie so quickly.

 

***

 

You pick the date -- one when both the kids will be with Peter -- and Maddie picks the bar, this time, and you raise your eyebrows at the name. It's far from the city center, far enough that you wonder what she's expecting. What she wants you to hide from.

Three drinks and more conversation about Viola Walsh than you ever wanted to have later, you get something of an answer when she drags you to the single bathroom and locks the door, fingers skating up and down the buttons of your blouse. Your own hands settle on her waist and this, this shouldn't be easy either but it is. But easy doesn't always mean right.

"What are we doing?" you ask. You don't really mean to speak aloud, can hardly hear yourself, but Maddie does, and her brow furrows in confusion as she looks up at you. In the mirror next to you, her profile somehow looks more disappointed than her face in front of you does.

"I thought," she says slowly, "Alicia, I'm sorry, I thought that it was obvious. I thought you--"

_I do_ , you should say, filling in all the things she hasn't said: _I thought you wanted this too. I thought you wanted me. I thought you wanted to forget your responsibilities for a while._ But you're silent, staring fixedly into your own eyes in the mirror. The first night, you could have walked away from. Could have filed the night away with minimum embarrassment under _got a little too handsy with a friend over drinks_ and closed the lid on Maddie's box labeled _friend, campaign donor._  Tonight, she's leaning against a bar bathroom wall, looking up at you equal parts nervous and expectant and mischievous.

Dimly, you're aware that the silence is going on uncomfortably long. Your hair looks mussed, in the mirror, like you've been kissing Maddie for hours already. Your hands are still on her hips. Neither of you are walking away.

You're not nearly as drunk as you look. You think Maddie must not be nearly as drunk as she looks, either, because no one's eyes should be this sharp and glittery and knowing if they're really, truly drunk. No one's eyes should be this sharp and glittery and knowing at _all,_ and it makes you want her even more.

Slowly, deliberately, you turn her around. Just Maddie in front of you now, and no more glimpses of the mirror that's only telling half-truths. "Whatever," your mouth says, and, _kiss me_ , the whole rest of your body must say, because Maddie tangles her fingers in your hair and presses herself impossibly close against you and you're opening your mouth for her almost before you realize that you're really, finally, doing this

"I thought you were married," she mumbles against your mouth when she eventually stops kissing you, releasing your mouth and leaving you feeling strangely bereft. It doesn't stop her from tracing a lazy path down your neck, lips and tongue warm and wet and matching the heat between your legs.

"I thought you --" her lips find an especially sensitive spot on your neck and you arch closer to her and moan, train of thought completely lost. Has it always been like this, with Peter, with Will? Surely you would have burnt to ashes by now if it had. Maddie goes still against you, and you realize a half second too late that she does want an answer. "I thought you didn't care," you manage.

Her hands busy themselves again, unbuttoning your blouse. "Only if you do."

Even now, she's giving you an out, as if you haven't wanted something like this since that first night in the bar. As if she probably hasn't wanted it even longer, fingertips lingering too long on your wrist after your very first handshake.

You grab her hands, stilling them before they can do more than brush against the waistband of your slacks. "I don't," you say, and it's true in the moment and that's what counts. If you hadn't thought you were on fire before, Maddie's thumbs brushing across your stomach under your gaping shirt would have lit you up for sure. "But I do care that we don't do this here."

*

She takes you to her place, after that, strips you methodically and laughs as you groan at her unhurried pace, but lets you undress her in return and hisses _please, fuck, just like that_ when you get her out of her shirt and bra and take first one nipple, then the other into your mouth, pressing your teeth just barely into her breast.

She straddles you, slick and hot against your skin and says _tell me what you like_ and it's been so long since someone asked that it shouldn't be easy to guide her fingers to your clit and then inside you, shouldn't be easy to press your hips into her free hand and come with a gasp and her name on your lips. It shouldn't be easy to fit your mouth around her for the first time, to smirk up at her from between her legs and watch her eyes flutter shut when you make her come.

Nothing with Maddie should be easy, but somehow it is.

***

 

One more fundraiser, _last one for the month, Alicia, I promise,_ Eli says like you don't have a life of your own and the month doesn't have ten more days and at least four more events in it.

But you and Peter are keeping up appearances for the campaign, and since you're now screwing both Maddie and Will with something coming alarmingly close to regularity you figure you owe them that much. So you show up on Eli's arm and pretend it doesn't sting when he hands you over to Peter like a prize.

Eli inclines his head to the far corner. "Head of the state Democratic Party. Please, please, _please_ be nice."

You put on your best innocent face, the one that's only a lie half the time these days. "I'm always nice."

He snorts. "And _don't_ talk about religion."

Peter's tugging at your arm, but Eli looks so nervous you can't resist the temptation. "What about ... sex?" Eyes wide and voice low, letting him in on a secret.

"Don't you d--" and then the light dawns and his face smooths out and his eyes narrow. " _Not funny._ "

"Well, what about death? Taxes?"

Peter makes an impatient noise and pulls you away, and you laugh as Eli's "Yeah, that -- that last one, Alicia!" follows you through the crowd.

*

An hour and a half later a hand lands on your hip, and you whirl around, Eli and politeness be damned, ready to tell off the third state senator of the night. But it's just Maddie, hands now raised in apology and half-smirk pulling at her mouth. "I surrender, I surrender," she promises.

"Oh ... oh, _you_ ," is the best you can come up with, laughter bubbling under the surface, quiet and reckless.

Maddie shrugs. "You looked like you could use a break."

" _God_ yes," you sigh. "If I have to be nice to one more man trying to look down my dress tonight Eli's going to have a bigger challenge than even he would like to deal with."

Maddie licks her lips, and you smirk as her eyes fall to your breasts. "Would it be presumptuous of me to ask if there's anyone you would _like_ to let look down your dress?"

You glance around you hope nonchalantly, trying to gauge the likelihood of either of you being missed. "Only if you say it in front of the entire room."

"I can be discreet," she says, mock offense lightening her tone and giving lie to the words. "Come on." She grabs your hand and gestures toward the hallway leading from the ballroom to the rest of the hotel, and you follow much more enthusiastically than you followed Peter earlier.

You end up in the bathroom again, except this time it's a fancy hotel bathroom with a carpeted waiting area and a velvety couch. Up against the wall, Maddie's hands making their way under your skirt, you think dimly that Eli would have a fit if he knew what the two of you were getting up to. His candidate's wife fucking the campaign's biggest donor -- the _female_  donor -- in a hotel bathroom whose main door doesn't even lock, and wouldn't that be a new sort of scandal for him to fix. Maybe you would even tell him, one day, just to see his face, if it wouldn't have meant telling Maddie's secret too.

You haven't done this clandestine sort of thing since . . . since . . . _before._ Before Peter. Before the kids. Before it _mattered,_ mattered that you're a politician's wife and soon to be a senior partner and a symbol and a saint. Before all the bits that made _Alicia_ started getting minds of their own and spiraling off into masks that you learned to swap with still-unfamiliar ease.

But it's hard to think about _before_ when Maddie's clever fingers and tongue are anchoring you so firmly in _now,_ the _now_ that is her fingers pressing against the damp silk of your panties and her teeth tugging at your lower lip, the _now_ that is your teeth against her collarbone and the whisper of the zipper of her suit pants, the thrill of finding her just as wet and wanting as you are.

_Before_ doesn't matter now. Maybe it never did.

 

***

 

After -- and there's always an _after_ , even now, even when you're not quite sure what happened between you these past months -- after, you still see her. Somehow you weren't expecting that, even though you should have, because she's a politician and even if your husband weren't one too that on its own would justify her showing up in the most uncomfortable places.

Like your office. You come in one morning, _after_ , and she's half-sitting on your desk like she belongs there. You catch Kalinda's eye across the hall and she gives you one of those damnable, impossible smirks, and you wonder if this is just a new way she's found to punish you.

"What?" you snap, shutting the door behind you, and neither are nearly as sharp as you would have liked them to be.

"Alicia," she sighs, and there's a quiet pity in her voice that makes you want to slap her. "Alicia, this doesn't have to be awkward."

_Awkward_ is a mild way of putting it.

You had something, with Kalinda, and there were parts of it that were real and parts of it that were worth trying to salvage. Even after everything. There's nothing from Maddie-before that you can imagine either of you putting in the same effort to save.

Sitting on your desk she's still shorter than you, but she's tilting her head and meeting your eyes anyway. Dignified to the end, except you know what she looks like completely undone at your hands and she knows what you look like under hers. "You used me," you say, quiet and cold when it becomes clear that she's perfectly content to let the silence spin out as long as you'll let it.

"No," she says calmly, just as quiet and not nearly as cold, and you can feel your control slipping. "No, Alicia, I know, I _know_ it could look like that but I promise, Alicia, really --"

Saying your name over and over, as if if she says it enough times she can recapture the promise it once had. When had you stepped so close to her? "It looks like that because it's what you _did_ , Maddie." Your name in her voice this morning is an apology; her name in yours is a refusal. "Peter, Kalinda, you ... I should've seen it sooner, is all."

You watch her eyebrows go up at Kalinda's name, watch her glance flicker to the exposed window, and you know that Kalinda's watching. "Kalinda," she echoes contemplatively, and you think back to things you told her about Kalinda, all the elliptical hurts that you talked around and all the sympathy she offered. You had never guessed, then, that you and Maddie would end up like this, some distorted mirror of you and Kalinda. When had Maddie known?

"You know," you say, leaning just a bit closer. Almost as close as you were to her that first night at the bar, and you hope no one but Kalinda walks past, "You're the only one who tried to pretend it wasn't a betrayal. That's rich, isn't it, coming from someone who's supposed to be all about feminist solidarity?"

"Oh." She exhales the word in a long sigh across the exposed skin of your chest, and you shiver despite yourself. "Is that what this is about? You think your husband would do better for women than I would?"

_No_ , you think, but also _yes_ , but mostly, _it doesn't matter._ You would be there, and Maddie wouldn't, and that might have been enough for now.

 

***

 

Later, when you watch Maddie campaign, you think: _I was wrong._ Because there's a fire in Maddie's eyes that goes beyond hunger for an election victory and a sadness in the corners of her mouth that only has a little bit to with how you friendship- _and_ ended. She would have tried. She would have cared.

You hate yourself, almost, for how you can tell this when you only meant anything good to each other for a few weeks. You wonder how much more you managed to tell her than you thought in the same period of time. Wonder why she never used any of it -- used _you_ against Peter.

But it doesn't matter, really, by the time you're standing next to your husband, the pair of you flush with victory for the cameras. You're only ever moving forward.

There's nowhere else for you to go.

(You, the voice in your head that still sounds like Kalinda whispers, could be better than both of them.)


End file.
